Come Right Up to the Edge
by thedirigibleballoon
Summary: Kanda has dreams. They're always about someone he can't quite reach. Sometimes it's hard to tell who it is, though. Past Alma/Kanda, implied Allen/Kanda pre-slash.


The first thing he can recognize is warmth. Warm eyes, warm smiles, warm sun.

"Come on!" a figure calls out to him once he'd grasped his bearings, blinking away the brightness of the open field. Their hand is outstretched to take his, pulling him along eagerly. Then they run, keeping him close beside them, laughing as the stalks of wheat tickle their legs. Their laugh is as clear and bright as the day, and he blossoms beneath it. He follows, feigning reluctance, his lips tugging upward of their own volition. The love that bubbles in his chest leaves him too afraid to even consider protesting.

It's impossible to make out any concrete features on the laughing person, but the only thing that matters is Kanda's absolute conviction that he knows them and loves them deeply. His heart pounds in his chest. _Always, always, always,_ it says. There might have been a flash of dark hair - perhaps a flash of light - a red stain on the side of the face. There are too many shadows to be certain, but it still makes sense to Kanda.

He couldn't recall when the shadows had arrived. They loom over the perfectly vacant field, dark and foreboding. The wheat is buffeted in the sudden gusts of cold wind; the sky is overcast. It stings his face, needling under his skin, and he feels his blood freeze. The ground beneath them shudders and groans, heaving as if it were in its death throes; it gives off the deafening squeal of twisting metal, sharp and grating against his ears.

"Come on!" the figure beside him shouts again, desperate and breathless. Their grip on his hand is unrelenting. There's dust floating thickly in the air.

A malicious laugh makes them whip around - a familiar silhouette is visible against the nebulous clouds, so black that it looks like void, mercilessly sucking in all remaining light around it. "Ah," says the Earl, "good evening."

"Go," the figure, his love, says softly to him. "Run."

"I'm not leaving you," he argues, the anger and outrage colliding. "I promised I wouldn't, I -"

"Please," they say, more forcefully. They shove Kanda away, their warm eyes soft and sorry - and he recovers quickly, but the Earl's hand is already around their throat. The distance between them suddenly felt like miles, like centuries.

"Wait," he starts, his chest feeling cavernous and empty. "Wait -" He reaches for Mugen, but it isn't there.

There's a flicker of ashy skin, piercing golden eyes; a scream splits the air, and Kanda breaks into a run, even as he watches the Millennium Earl drag his love, his friend, farther from him.

He's been here before.

"I love you," he hears, so quietly that the winds could have whispered it.

"Wait -!" he tries again, futilely, his hand outstretched as if his arm alone could span the space between them. "Al-"

He bolts upright, gasping for breath, his arm still held out and reaching for nothing but the brick wall opposite his bed. Panting, he blinks rapidly, adjusting to the head-spinning transition between this world and the next, still just as present in the wheat field as he was within the walls of the Black Order. His hand falls back to his lap; his fingers tighten around a fistful of tangled sheets as he fights against a shiver that wracks his body. The cold sweat turns icy as it cools on his skin.

He stares out the colored glass of his window, cognizant of his lotus staring at him from his bed stand, half-wilted and judgmental. It is still murky out - perhaps 3 AM.

He can't recall how the name that lingers on his lips would have ended. He can't remember their face, either - the only thing he knows is the surge of violent, completely irrational protectiveness that wells up in him at the thought. It's right next to the strange, misplaced sorrow that had long since taken root and festered. It occurs to him that he should be more put-off by this fact than he is.

He pushes his covers away and stands, feeling something like an itch settle into his bones, pressure lodging itself behind his eyes. Taking a ribbon - red, he notes - from the mantle, he ties up his damp hair into a loose ponytail. He makes a point to lift Mugen from its place beside his bed, fitting the strap over his head. It's a comfortable weight on his back.

The stone tiles are frigid against his bare feet as he steps into the circular corridor, and he exhales to ward against the chill that creeps over him. If he pays close enough attention, he can make out the dull chatter of the Science Division, running consistently at all hours, or the gentle glow of Hevlaska and the Innocence, down in the depths of the Headquarters tower. He tries to forget that the light of Innocence is reprehensible.

He lets his mind wander as he traverses the halls - a rare occurrence, but he just needs to get out and move. He finds himself atop the parapet, gazing out across the expanse of the island and, beyond that, the ocean. Seemingly endless, like so many other things.

He didn't know what he was supposed to find out here. Blue-grey eyes and white hair, perhaps. Or maybe more nothingness. The wind plucks at his hair; below him, the moat that surrounds the gothic castle ripples. Lily pads and lotus flowers had found their way to the waters, bobbing along with the breeze, and he blinks. He could not say for sure if those had been there yesterday.

A moth spends a few moments to investigate the red ribbon in his hair. Kanda turns and makes his way back into the gut of the dark tower, keeping his breaths steady, shaking the last clinging hopelessness of his dream like beads of water from his memory.

It wouldn't be the last time, he knew.


End file.
